Category Archives: Photography

Test your OBSERVATION SKILLS with this great little challenge from the Audubon Society.  I needed unlimited time but I got them all. 

A lunar eclipse will dazzle us this month on the evening of February 21st.  Learn about this and other wonders of the February Sky at Amazing Space.

Antti Kemppainen  has done what seemed to me to be impossible.  This photograph captures an explosion of fireworks, a bolt of lightning and….. drum roll….. the Comet McNaught all at the same instant!  Not only that but the photograph was wonderfully well crafted.  I suspect from his name Antti may be Finish, but the photo was taken in Australia.  Kudos Antti, a very impressive shot!

I found it at Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Take-Your-Camera-Everywhere

This from digital Photography School.  I’m in!
1. You’ll begin to see the world Differently - with a camera in your pocket or bag you’ll find yourself looking for opportunities to use it and when you start looking at the world in that way you’ll start to see if differently.

2. You’ll take more pictures - it sounds obvious - and it is - but the result of more pictures is that you’ll improve your averages of taking a good one!

3. You’ll be more likely to get out of Auto mode - the more you use your camera and see your results the more you’ll find yourself wanting to stretch yourself out of auto mode into using the full potential of your camera.

4. You’ll get to know your camera - the more you use your camera the more familiar you’ll become with it and what it’s capable of. I find that after an intense week with my camera that changing settings becomes second nature and much faster.

5. You’ll miss less ‘Kodak moments’ - you don’t realize just how many opportunities you miss to capture moments photographically until you start carrying your camera around. While I’m a big believer in not relying upon your photography to ‘create’ memories - I think that images are a wonderful way to help remember stories and celebrate life.

Images are good for the soul - don’t miss the opportunity to create them in 2008. Take your camera everywhere!

Image by carlosiuis

 
Saturn lies more than 8° below Regulus as the stars of Leo rise. The planet brightens to magnitude 0.4 this month. Its rings are narrowing, and this year will be the last to view them well. In 2009, they’ll be edge-on to us.More of the planet itself is now on view. The boundary between Saturn’s equatorial cloud belt and more temperate zones is the most prominent atmospheric feature. Notice how the planet’s shadow darkens the rings’ western side. Watch the shadow slowly diminish as Saturn approaches its February 24 opposition.We can observe Saturn’s satellites and their shadows crossing the disk now that the rings - and the plane of the moons’ orbits - are near edge-on to us. The shadow of Titan, the planet’s largest moon, is the easiest to see, and Titan’s shadow begins transiting Saturn’s disk later this year.

I regularly check the Week In Pictures at MSNBC.  There are always some amazing photos.  At the end of every December they do the Year in Pictures, they’re wonderful, especially the Space Photos.

Click on the photo to learn more about the JAXA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and their HDTV images of the Moon.

I found a couple of photo collections with some amazing stop action.  You can view them here and here.

Here is a web site with 20 Pictures taken at exactly the right angle.  Very amusing.

mini.jpg

Here is a photo of a virus.  Looks like a tiny robot.  Lovely, thinking of these things on a search and destroy mission inside our bodies - replicating themselves in our own cells.

 For a gander at many more beautiful and bizzare items in the miniature and invisible world visit:  The 49th International Conference on Electron, Ion and Photon Beam Technology and Nanofabrication Bizarre/Beautiful Micrograph Contest .  My favorite is the tiny toilet, which apparently has a similar purpose to the ones we all so commonly frequent.

This is not real. Could be pretty shocking though, when you first open the door!